Ecohabitude

Etsy Honest Co the scale of Amazon = Ecohabitude

Ecohabitude is a peer-to-peer marketplace to buy, sell, and discover socially conscious products. With over 1,000 green, eco-friendly, and socially conscious brands all in one place, we make living a healthier, holistic lifestyle easier than ever before. Think Etsy meets Honest Co.

We’re fulfilling the growing demand for transparency in brands by providing an online platform for consumers to connect directly with suppliers and makers around the world who produce high quality, ethical products without sacrificing quality or style.

Apparel, accessories, beauty products, housewares, gourmet foods, and other ethically created products — you can find it all on Ecohabitude. And do so with confidence.

In August 2014, we launched our closed beta test phase where we worked with 20 brands. In January 2015, we went live to the public. Since that time, we have established ongoing strategic partnerships with industry leaders, influencers, bloggers, editors, and organizations, and have successfully opened over 1,000 shops.

We are the largest marketplace in the health and sustainability niche, offering over 61,000 products in more categories than any other site. What our closest competitors have accomplished over 5-6 years and tens of millions of dollars in funding, we have exceeded in 12 months.

How have we been so successful? Read on to find out! (Hint: #WhatsYourHabitude)

Other businesses may claim they support sustainable and socially conscious products, but they sure don’t back that up in any real way.

Beside Ecohabitude, there is no other centralized marketplace that only sells natural, eco-friendly, or socially responsible products. Some sites have a single tab or section of such products, but even then, none of their products listed in those sections are vetted or fact checked.

Before Ecohabitude, a mother who wanted to purchase natural baby products, baby clothing, and beauty products would be forced to visit separate websites for each category. She would also have to know about these brands beforehand to do so.

Ecohabitude founder Kristen Drapesa decided to do something about this after learning her mother had cancer. Kristen began reconsidering the food and products she was using and began to change her lifestyle and habits. A few years later, Kristen took a position in New York City as a buyer for Lux & Eco, an e-commerce company that sells luxury green brands. She quickly found out how difficult it was to find and purchase green products with ease and transparency. Inspired by the incredible stories of the many brands she met without a venue to sell their products, she decided to build a platform to do just that. Ecohabitude was born.

Ecohabitude helps us all be a part of change that matters through the way we shop. Being conscious of what we buy — where it comes from, who made it, and what it’s made of — is the first step. Ecohabitude makes it easy to live by your values and support the things that are important to you and your unique lifestyle.

That’s why give our shoppers the ability to connect directly with suppliers and makers around the world who are more than happy to explain their product’s origin and their company’s mission. Over the last three years, the Ecohabitude team has also built a database of more than 15,000 brands, researched and vetted for their social consciousness. We broke all these companies down into product footprints.

Shopping online for quality eco-friendly and charitable products can be a tedious task. Although search engines can be helpful, you’ll have your work cut out for you in filtering through a multitude of questionable products. Trying to decipher whether something was made ethically, or if it’s been falsely advertised to appear “green,” will make any head spin.

To simplify conscious consumerism and bring transparency into the ecommerce space, we’ve developed the product footprint — an online tagging system and sustainable impact report. Product footprints give sellers a way to share in-depth information, certifications, videos, and photos behind the supply chains of their products. Product footprints also provide consumers the ability to conveniently shop according to their values — be it a vegan lifestyle, organic needs, or a desire to give back to society and vote with their dollar.

Every seller on Ecohabitude abides by a minimum of two of the following footprints:

We allow sellers to truly act autonomously and independently as if they built their own store from scratch. We just provide them with a bunch of tools to help make that happen:

Sellers can see all orders, incoming payments, confirmations from buyers, addresses, order statuses, etc. in their dashboard.

Sellers don’t have to sell us their products wholesale — they’re in control, they set the pricing.

Our platform connects with Mailchimp, has Adwords, and social media integrations.

Brands benefit from our higher end image. We place a high priority on design and esthetics — packaging and photography have to be sharp.

Our transaction fees are lower than Amazon and Etsy.

We use Stripe and Paypal for payments, making the escrow process easy for all parties.

Ecohabitude has built and successfully beta tested a cutting edge peer-to-peer ecommerce platform from scratch — no additional bulk or technical debt from unused components. Sticking to a standard and maintaining best practices was a high priority during development.

Since launching in January 2015, we’ve gathered together 1,000 brands that meet our requirements, resulting in over 50,000 products, more than any other marketplace in our same market. What our closest competitors have accomplished over 5-6 years and tens of millions of dollars in funding, we have exceeded in 12 months.

A number of organizations have expressed interest in partnerships including Ships Station, Green Drinks, Green Gala, 1% for the Planet, Honest Company, and John Paul Dejoria of Paul Mitchell. We also have a marketing plan in place with Hawke Media that spans the next 12-18 months.

Marketing will be our big focus of 2016. We are also focused on expanding our shops to additional verticals and products, delivering better pricing to shoppers. We also have a partnership with Ezeebee which will help us expand into the UK market in 2016.

Make sure to request access to the business plan tab of this profile for an inside look into Ecohabitude!

Kristen is a serial social entrepreneur who formerly worked as a buyer for Lux & Eco, and co-founded Dawson Media Hawaii, Hawaii Polo Life, and created a fundraising platform collaboration between the AUSA (an advocacy group for the United States Army) and USPA (the United States Polo Sssociation). She is an active member of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) and an advocate for women in technology and leadership roles.

Matt is a full stack tech entrepreneur that has been professionally developing for over 10 years and has written software at every layer of the stack. Formerly of UBS, Goldman Sachs, and Thomson Reuters, Matt has developed software in client account management, alternative investments, custom tax software, and commerce platforms. He is an active member of the Young Entrepreneur Council and enjoys contributing in open source projects and teaching.

Andrea is a sustainably specialized creative director. She independently organized the first ethical fashion event in Southern California, Ecologique: Fashion for a Green Future, in addition to launching the eco fashion publication REFIX Magazine in 2010. Andrea currently offers sustainable business consulting through Ecologique Fashion to designers and businesses. She is a member of the Ethical Writers Coalition with published works on Ethical Fashion Forum, Ecouterre, REFIX Magazine, and the Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator’s blog. Andrea was also named one of the “Top Ten Innovators Under 30” by 944 Magazine in 2010.

Leonardo has excelled in finance projects at companies such as PwC and Sodexo, including IPOs, M&As, and valuation and business recovery in industries like pharmaceuticals, beverage, forestry, watches, and diagnostic medicine. He holds a double MBA in Finance and Information Systems.

Molly helped redesign the interface prior to Ecohabitude’s launch in January 2015. Prior to this, she was the lead designer of the technology team at Jefferies LLC, where she frequently presented at the annual developer’s conference.

Prior to working with our founding team to launch Ecohabitude, Asad worked at JPMorgan Chase on data mining projects to decipher data elements, provide feedback, and set up strategies. He also worked at Google as a Operations Lead where he initiated beta-testing, daily stress test feedback, and worked with engineering teams on technical and hardware issues and enhancements for “canary” phase testing.